Large-Scale Tree Plantations

by Andrew Cock. In "Plantations are not Forests. Commercial Tree Plantations in the Mekong Region".Vol. 9 No. 3 March - June 2004. Published by Towards Ecological Recovery and Regional Alliance (TERRA)

Since 1990, logging companies, rebel groups, criminal networks, various interim governments and the regime of former president Charles Taylor have colluded to plunder Liberia’s natural resources. During this period the timber sector witnessed a plethora of illegal activities and practices. Logging companies operated in rebel held territories without any form of regulation from the Forestry Development Authority; none of the revenue generated during this period benefited the Liberian people.

We have just received the good news that on Friday, 21 May, Floresmilo Villalta regained his freedom and immediately travelled to the community of Las Golondrinas to be reunited with his family and friends. Representatives of the Ecuadorian NGO Acción Ecológica made know their gratefulness, on behalf of Floresmilo, for the “incredible response” to the international campaign organized in favour of the 63-year old peasant, whose only “crime” was to try to defend the forests of his region against timber exploitation by the powerful BOTROSA company.

Pulp and paper production in Kenya is presently dominated by one firm, Pan African Paper Mills (Panpaper), which is a joint venture between the Kenyan Government, the World Bank’s private investment arm International Finance Corporation (IFC), and Orient Paper Mills, part of the Birhla group from India. The pulp mill was established in 1974 and is based in Webuye town, with a population of some 60,000 people, on the banks of the Nzoia River which drains into Lake Victoria.

‘Pulping the South’ by Larry Lohmann and Ricardo Carrere was a watershed publication for many groups and individuals around the world. Concerned people had been aware of many issues and problems associated with the expansion of industrial monoculture tree plantations in Southern countries, but it was this WRM publication that made the world sit up with a jolt.

Since 1996, in an attempt to control pollution, China's State Environmental Protection Administration has closed thousands of pulp and paper mills. "A significant portion of urban as well as rural water pollution problems came from industry and, in particular, the pulp and paper industry," commented the World Bank in a 2000 report about China's pulp and paper industry.

In the early 1980s the Indonesian government launched an ambitious forestry plan entitled "Industrial Timber Plantation (HTI) and Pulp Industry Development." In the early stages of its development, pulpwood plantations were claimed to rehabilitate degraded land and to reduce the pressure on natural forests. This misleading propaganda was indeed intended to disguise an ambitious plan of the Indonesian government for the country to become a world major pulp and paper producer.

Established in 1989, Advance Agro Public Company Limited is located in Prachinburi province. Its main business is producing and selling pulp and printing and writing paper. The company’s production capacity of bleached kraft pulp is 175,000 tons per year. It also produces bleached short-fibre pulp for two mills operated under Advance Agro Pulp, with a combined capacity of 427,000 tons as well as printing and writing paper, with an annual capacity of 250,000 tons. Along with its subsidiaries (High Tech Paper and Advance Paper), Advance Agro has an annual production capacity of 500,000 tons.

Just meters beyond the outer wall of Tan Mai Paper mill, a thriving industry exists in the shade of coconut trees. In ponds where rice fields used to lie, local villagers stand chest deep in wastewater from the factory. Young men strain to lift nets out of the ponds, filled to the brim with the catch of the day: paper fiber emitted in the mill's wastewater.

The debate on Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) has until now largely focused on agricultural crops and much less on genetically modified trees. This is understandable, given the fact that there are already several GM crops being commercially grown in many places of the world and given that many of them are aimed at directly or indirectly feeding human beings, whose health is thus potentially threatened.

Maybe it's something in the water in Geneva that causes temporary memory loss. Or maybe it's the coffee. Whatever, the participants at the fourth meeting of the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF-4) held in Geneva in May seemed to be suffering from a form of collective amnesia.

In many respects, there is very little difference between Swaziland and South Africa. Climate, topography, and geology are similar, so it is no wonder that the natural vegetation is much like that found in the South African Provinces of KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga, that virtually enclose the Swazi Kingdom.